CA Prop 8

Democracy

Protect Initiatives

"All political power is inherent in the people." - California Constitution

Democracy

I wish most of us would have a greater value for and appreciation of the democratic ideal of equal power sharing. I wish we would see each other less as opponents to defeat any which way we can, than as our fellow members of society, some of whom hold views that we find intensely disagreeable. I wish we will try to win other people over through compassion, reason and logic on issues that we feel strongly about.

Too often people are unwilling to give up anything of value for the sake of sharing power equally with others in society, including those who have conflicting values. Politicians have for generations used various hot-button issues to divide the population into various 'identities' towards more easily managing and controlling us. They have been getting away with imposing a far from ideal broken democratic system in one of the most advanced countries in the world. Not only do they keep getting away with manipulating the will of the people, but also with undermining the will of the people in critical ways on issues that often don't even get recognized as important issues. It is sad when many of the people who usually chant 'power to the people' have so easily been tricked into glorifying some state officials who likely harmed the people's power for political gain.

It is true that many people do not exercise the democratic power to influence the lives of others in a responsible manner where the desires and concerns of others are taken into account sufficiently. We should try to counter that through education, including training all of us to be better at critical thinking, empathy, counselling, meaningful discussions, etcetera, rather than through disempowering people.

We should encourage people to not be accepting of the kind of violations alleged in the lawsuit, as it undermines voter initiatives and hence the democratic ideal of equal power sharing. Even if we, the people, believe that a challenged law is in violation of the United States Constitution, we ought to ensure that all challenged laws get full judicial reviews, towards protecting our system of government and our political power. It is understandable that we will be tempted to subvert democratic processes to prevent great wrongs, but let us try to have enough value for democratic processes to not subvert it for anything but the greatest of wrongs. We ought to make it a criminal offense to undermine the political power of the people for political gain.

As Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.” To become comfortable with individuals in positions of power abusing their powers at the expense of our voting power, is to weaken ourselves, and become the ruled more so than the rulers.